We pushed live a whole slew of changes to our Streamview apps for Hootsuite over the long weekend. There are now two versions: Streamview Standard and Streamview PRO.

Streamview Standard versions are individual Twitter, Instagram, Syndicator (RSS feeds) and YouTube apps. If you’re using one of those apps, you may have noticed changes here and there as we strived to make the apps function a little more alike. You’ll also notice that Streamview for Instagram comes with analytics for one Instagram account. (more on that in the this blog post)

Streamview PRO combines all of the apps in one uber app. When you first add a new Streamview PRO stream, you will be asked which app you want to use:

After you’ve selected a network, you can still switch between the four by selecting a different network from the network menu:

The NEW Streamview SyndicatorOur Syndicator app has evolved in the Streamview PRO upgrade process too. It now has Power Searches, as well as the ability to import Power Search feeds from the Twitter, YouTube and Instagram Streamview apps. Power Searches are available in the Standard and PRO versions, however Power Search feeds are available only in Streamview PRO.

To get your Streamview Power Searches into Syndicator, simply open the Feed Manager in the Syndicator app and click Import Streamview Searches:

Imported searches will be added to the YouTubeSearches, TwitterSearches and InstagramSearches groups. Please not that these searches can only be used in Syndicator. We’ll be adding more similar features to Streamview PRO over the coming weeks and months as we strive to make Syndicator your one-stop reader.

Streamnotes too!Streamview PRO also comes with our Streamnotes save-to app. (more on Streamnotes in this blog post) If you’re new to Streamview, Streamnotes will be automatically installed when you add Streamview PRO. If you’ve been using Streamnotes+ for Instagram, you’ll have to add the plugin manually by following these steps:

1. Open the App directory by clicking on the App Directory option in the left menubar:

2. Search for the Streamview PRO app, and then click on the Settings button in the bottom right:

3. Next, find the App Plugins tab and select it:

4. Finally, click the Add button to add the plugin, and then the Finish button to get back to your streams:

If you were using the Streamview+ app, you now have everything in Streamview PRO. If you’re using one of the individual apps, and want to upgrade to Streamview PRO, first add the Streamview PRO app to your dashboard, then delete the individual app(s).

And, if you’re new to Streamview, check out the app page on the Hootsuite app directory web site.

Big news on the Streamview for Instagram front. If you’re a user of the Standard version, you now can get account analytics too! All versions of Streamview for Instagram now come with account analytics for one Instagram account. If you’re a Streamview+ user, you don’t have to do a thing. If you’re a Standard version user, click on the settings account to manage your Instagram accounts:

If there are not any accounts listed under Analytics Accounts, click the Add Analytics Account button to get started. You can now also add multiple Instagram accounts for analytics. Contact us if you want to add more accounts.

Meet the EngagersEver wanted to know who is engaging with your Instagram posts the most? We’ve added a new stream to Streamview+ that allows you to view a stream of your Engagers, just as you can for your Influencers. Simply select Engagers from the Streams menu:

You can then sort Engagers by their Total Engagement (likes + count) or, by number of Number ofLikes or Number of Comments only. You can also choose to display results from All time, or from the past 7 or 30 days.

Once you have everything selected, click Select & Display, and a stream of engagers will be displayed:

The Engagers stream will only work for Instagram accounts that have been added to the Analytics Accounts on the app’s setttings page.

We just released a big update to our Syndicator for Hootsuite app. This is the first part of major update that all of our Streamview apps are currently going through, that will make all of the Streamview apps function similarly. The updates will culminate with a new Streamview PRO app. (more about that in a future blog post!)

What you’ll see in the Syndicator update are:

Power SearchesYou can now create and save powerful searches that search the feeds you select for the keywords you specify.

You can also choose to search in a list of popular feeds. You do not have to be following all of the popular feeds to see results from them.

Video PlayIf Syndicator finds a post with a YouTube or Vimeo video in it:

You can now view the video in app:

Updated Feed ManagerThe Feed Manager went through some major changes too. It’s now possible to add feeds to multiple groups:

As well as click to remove a feed from a particular group:

You can add all of the feeds from a particular group to the current stream in the new Feed Selector popup. (click the rss icon on the Power Searches and Streams tabs to see it)

For all you Vimeo users out there, here’s an easy way to get your Vimeo feeds into our Syndicator feed reading app for Hootsuite. First open up Vimeo in your favorite web browser, and make sure you’re viewing the My Feed section. Once you’re there, scroll down to the bottom of the page:

On the right side, you’ll see a list of four RSS links. One for your feeds, one for your share, one for your videos and one for your likes. Copy the links, and paste them into Add feed box in Syndicator’s feed manager, and you’re ready to go!

If you’re a Hootlet user, and want an easy way to add RSS subscriptions to Syndicator, keep reading, as it couldn’t be easier.

First, click on the RSS feed link as below:

You’ll see a little popup. Click + Add to Hootsuite, and next select where you want to add the new feed to:

You’re done! It’s that easy. If you’re not already using Syndicator, it will install the FREE version of Syndicator for you. If you’re using one of the PAID versions of Syndicator, you will have to add the new feed to one of your app streams afterwards, as the add a feed feature only adds to streams in the FREE version.

Reading a blog you really like? Almost all blogs have an RSS/ATOM feed that you can easily add to Syndicator. Many will have an RSS icon somewhere on their page from which you can copy the RSS feed link and then paste it into Syndicator’s Feed Manager. And, if you can’t find one, here are some easy tips on how to create a feed link for some of the more popular blogging platforms:

For sites hosted on blogger, add atom.xml to the end of the site’s URL, e.g.: https://adsense.googleblog.com/atom.xml

For most WordPress hosted sites, whether they’re self-hosted or not, simply add /feed to get the URL for the site’s RSS feed, e.g.: https://mishtalk.com/feed

Have a blog on medium you’re interested in? Simply add /feed/ before the user’s name like this: https://medium.com/feed/@Medium. If the user has a custom domain, add feed to the end of the URL like this: https://journal.thriveglobal.com/feed.

Finding the feed for a tumblr blog is a breeze too. Just add /rss, e.g.: https://colorfulgradients.tumblr.com/rss

Just like tumblr, ghost just needs /rss added to the url, e.g. https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/

Now we’ll take the feed link and add it to Syndicator. Just as with the previous Google Alerts blog post, first we’ll open Syndicator’s feed manager by clicking the RSS icon in the app’s menubar. Next, paste the RSS feed url into the Add RSS feed box found in the bottom left corner:

and then click Add Feed. Finally, add the feed to a stream and you’re ready to monitor for new blog posts.

If the blog you’re interested in is running on a blogging platform not covered here, try adding /feed or /rss, and if that doesn’t work, searching google will usually turn up a way to get the url for the RSS feed.

Following up on our last post for getting your YouTube subscriptions into Syndicator, next we’ll show you how to get a Google Alerts subscription added to Syndicator.

First, open up the Google Alerts page in your web browser. You’ll see a page something like this:

Enter the text you want to receive alerts for in the text box:

In the example above, we’ve used OR to indicate that we want results with either Apple or Microsoft in them. OR is just one of the many options you can use. Here’s a list of the more commonly used ones:

Any/OR
Return results with any of the keywords in them:

apple OR microsoft

All/AND
Put a space in between keywords to return results that contain all of the keywords:

apple microsoft

Similar words
Return results with the original keyword, as well as those with similar keywords in them:

~luxury

(that’s a tilde) This will return results that have luxury in them, as well as those with similar words. (e.g. you may get results with opulent in them)

Specific sites
Return results that are only from a specific web site. This could be your site, a competitors or just a site you’re interested in:

site:www.synaptive.com

Phrases
Enclose a phrase in double quotes to return results that contain that specific phrase.

“microsoft surface”

You can also select sources, language, region to refine the results you’re receiving.

When you’re done, click Create alert, and the following page will be displayed:

Right-click the RSS icon and copy the feed’s link, or, click the icon to open the feed in a new browser tab, and copy the feed’s link from your browser’s address bar. The feed’s link should look something like this:

https://www.google.com/alerts/feeds/173833527407/17405446340721

Next, we’ll take this feed link and add it to Syndicator. Just as with the previous YouTube subscriptions blog post, first we’ll open Syndicator’s feed manager by clicking the RSS icon in the app’s menubar. But this time, we’re going to paste the RSS feed url into the Add RSS feed box found in the bottom left corner:

and then click Add Feed.

You’ve now created a Google Alert and added it to your list of Syndicator feeds. Add the feed to a stream and watch those alerts come in!

Looking for more Google generated content? Check out Google News to keep up to date on news from virtually anywhere on virtually any topic. There’s an RSS link at the bottom of each page, so you can easily add Google News feeds to Syndicator!

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the Export subscriptions button located in the bottom-right corner to download an OPML file with all of your YouTube subscriptions in it.

Next open up Syndicator in your Hootsuite dashboard and click the FeedManager icon in the app’s menu bar. With the Feed Manager open, drag and drop the OPML file you just downloaded here:

You’ve now added all of your YouTube subscriptions to Syndicator. Add your subscriptions to a stream, and you’re ready to monitor all of your subscriptions for new videos. Also, all subscriptions will be added to the YouTube Subscriptions group, making feed management a breeze.

Happy to announce that you can now save PDF and CSV files to your Dropbox or Google Drive cloud files with Streamnotes. Simply click Google Drive or Dropbox from the list of destinations on the left, then choose PDF or CSV to save, and finally select the folder you want to save the file to.

If you’re using the free version of our Syndicator RSS reader app, you may have noticed some features have disappeared. After some long and hard thinking, we’ve decided to make some features that are currently a part of all versions of the Syndicator app only available in the PRO version.

The following features are now only available in the PRO version of our Syndicator app:

We’ll also be limiting the free version to 2 streams, with a maximum of 10 feeds in each stream. If you already have streams setup, and have more than 2 streams, or more than 10 feeds in any one stream, don’t worry, they’ll keep working as-is. For existing users, the limits will only come into effect when you add new streams, or add new feeds to an existing stream.

Our goal with these changes is to make the free version a functional RSS reader and the PRO version a powerful RSS monitoring tool. To do this we found that we needed to find ways to make the PRO version a more attractive upgrade. We decided to add new features, like the ability to search across the most popular feeds we’re indexing, as well as to reduce the feature set of the free version. Along the way, we’ve discovered that the Freemium model involves a tough balance. A balance that we’re definitely trying our best to achieve. A balance that provides amazing apps for Hootsuite users, but one that also allows us to pay the bills.